Nigel Pearson kidding no one as Leicester farce rolls on

It must go down as one of the stranger days in Nigel Pearson’s managerial career, spent watching a Canadian folk band in the local pub while his job at Leicester City rested in the balance. Pearson’s evening cannot have been easy but, the way he described it, the chaos surrounding the club did not impact on a very average Sunday.

“My cat was sitting on my knee all afternoon, I was like Blofeld,” said Pearson. “I spent the day at home. There was a Canadian folk band at the Greystones pub. They weren’t very good.”

That was the serene scene that Pearson depicted during a lengthy and rather awkward press conference on Monday at the King Power Stadium, half an hour in which he spoke a lot but said very little. There were no details about his conversations with Leicester’s owners, no details about the assurances he received about his job, no details about the inexplicable decision to grab James McArthur by the throat while the midfielder lay on the ground.

Instead there was plenty of straight-batting, a few tenuous jokes and the overall impression that it was business as usual, a mundane Monday as he prepared for the trip to Arsenal in the Premier League.

However, Pearson was kidding no one. Leicester has been a club engulfed in farce since Saturday’s 1-0 defeat to Crystal Palace, with a manager on the brink and a hierarchy unsure of the next move. There were four hours between reports of Pearson’s sacking and a Leicester statement denying his departure on Sunday evening, a vacuum of silence from which no one has emerged smelling of roses.

“The timescale was a lot different for me,” said Pearson of an evening when indecision at Leicester was abounding. He insists that the club’s owners have backed him in private, but it will be interesting to see whether their resolve is tested once more should City fall to a heavy defeat at the Emirates tonight.

Leicester are bottom of the Premier League and, although the performances have perhaps not warranted their place at the foot of the table, time is ticking on a campaign that is threatening to end with an immediate relegation back to the Championship.

Pearson seemed relatively calm but the signs indicate that he is feeling the pressure more than he is letting on. There was the ugly incident in November when he swore at a supporter who had been shouting abuse at him from the stands – resulting in a €13,500 fine and touchline ban – and then the bizarre altercation with McArthur, a failed transfer target for Leicester, at the weekend.

Perhaps even stranger than the incident itself was Pearson’s assertion in post-match interviews that he could “look after himself”, following a remarkable flashpoint that saw the manager tangled up with a player who had inadvertently fallen into him.

That was the one point which Pearson discussed bullishly here, lambasting the criticism he received on Saturday's Match of the Day from pundits Danny Murphy and Jermaine Jenas, and the presenter, Gary Lineker. Lineker described the whole incident as "a bit strange", Jenas said "his whole reaction shocked me a little bit", while Murphy added, "if it was nothing come out and say it was nothing – maybe there's something underlying from the transfer that didn't happen".

Pearson said: “You talk about these disciplinary things. Well, one was and one wasn’t. Some people criticise me for not being animated enough, for sitting in stands and not showing any passion. I come down, get involved in a couple of situations and all of a sudden, it’s a different angle. I’m a human being and I will make mistakes from time to time but what I will say is that any mistakes I make are very honest ones.

“It was all very light-hearted. If you see a number of the pictures, there are smiles. These things happen. I have had both my knees replaced, you know. I did take quite a nasty tumble.”

For all the unsavoury business of the weekend, Pearson would not be drawn on how close he was to losing his job. He added: “I’m down here, sitting in front of you, talking about a situation over the weekend that has been generated by a speculative story. That’s the nature of the beast. I want to talk about football but I fully understand that you are here to ask questions that are not necessarily what I want to talk about.

“I am managing this football club as I have for least three and a quarter years and I am looking to prepare my team the best way possible for a big game at Arsenal. And that, really, is all you’re going to get from me today.

“I’m very happy to shoulder the responsibility for my football team. I work for a football club that I’ve worked for on two occasions, you think it’s three but it’s two. What goes on behind closed doors will stay there.”

And so Leicester go into a game against an Arsenal side desperate to bounce back from a north London derby defeat. It is not ideal preparation for an ominous challenge, to say the least, but Pearson admitted he was pleased to have a match to focus his attention on.

For Leicester’s owners, though, there are bigger issues. Opinions appear divided behind the scenes as the club attempts to pick itself up from a difficult and damaging few days.

(Guardian service)